Green finance: There’s an app for that: how fintech is financing the SDGs

The Green Digital Finance Alliance is harnessing people power through technologies such as mobile money to speed up the low-carbon transition

One growing area of green finance is fintech. Last year saw the launch of the Green Digital Finance Alliance, which is ostensibly a partnership between Ant Financial, China’s leading online and mobile financial services provider, and UN Environment. Its aim is to align fintech-powered global financial systems with sustainable development, while making green finance an integral part of the daily lives of people and businesses.

One of the alliance’s first initiatives is an app that “gamifies” carbon footprint tracking, awarding points depending on how environmentally friendly a purchase is, such as buying a train ticket rather than fuel for a car. The points allow users to grow virtual trees which are then converted into a real tree, planted in the desert in Inner Mongolia.

The app also taps into the belief that it’s not just top-down action that will help to stop climate change, but bottom-up approaches too, that help individuals to make simple changes to their lives.

Green fintech is also being used to help investors access asset management companies selling green and sustainable investment products, and insurance policies that give customers money back for the days they don’t use their cars. Trine, a Swedish tech start-up, enables savers in downtown...

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